Daily Bulletin

Thursday, January 25, 1996

Faculty association votes yes

Members of UW's faculty association voted yesterday, by a margin of
more than two to one, to invite professors and librarians to sign
union cards. If 40 per cent of eligible people do sign, the
Ontario Labour Relations Board will conduct a certification vote.

The vote at yesterday's closed meeting of the association was
143 in favour, 62 opposed, 1 abstention, says
an
announcement
issued by Jeff Shallit of the computer science department,
who is secretary of the
faculty
association.
Shallit's statement called the vote "an historic step
forward for the rights of faculty members".

He also said:

Over two hundred of the approximately 290 members of the unincorporated
Association were in attendance. . . .
After about forty-five minutes of discussion, where speakers both
pro- and anti- certification were heard, secret ballots were distributed
at about 5 PM. Members then voted on the following enabling motion:
"that the Faculty Association of the University of
Waterloo proceed to obtain membership cards and apply to the
Ontario Labour Relations Board for certification." . . .

The next step in the certification process is for membership cards to be
signed by members of the bargaining unit (regular and non-regular faculty
and librarians) requesting a certification vote to be held by the Ontario
Labour Relations Board. A total of 40% of the bargaining unit must
sign these cards to proceed to the second step, which is a secret ballot
vote of members of the bargaining unit. The secret ballot vote would
be ordered and conducted by the OLRB.
Certification would take place if a simple majority of those voting
vote in favour.

Over the next few weeks, canvassers will contact faculty members and
librarians to request that they sign membership cards to proceed to
the voting step. The Faculty Association, University of Waterloo
(unincorporated) strongly urges faculty and librarians to sign the cards. . . .

The objective in seeking to certify is to obtain fair, effective and
democratic representation in negotiating terms and conditions of
employment. . . .
Voluntary negotiations over the past several years, both for policy
revision and the Memorandum of Agreement, failed to strengthen and
protect the legitimate rights and interests of members, because the
Board of Governors and the Administration could, and did, simply refuse
to agree to improvements.

Writing the 1996-97 budget

A "central reinvestment fund" of around $3 million
to help departments adjust to their budget cuts and
then move off in "new directions" will be part of UW's financial
picture in the coming year. Provost Jim Kalbfleisch announced
the fund at yesterday's meeting of the senate finance committee,
and outlined what's being done in the wake of provincial
funding cuts and the
Special
Early Retirement Program.

The meeting talked about how UW will handle the budget cuts
that will have to happen as of May 1. Kalbfleisch said the cut will
likely be about 7 per cent across campus, but it will be "later in the
spring" before that figure is precise.
Not all departments will lose exactly 7 per cent -- deans and
associate provosts will decide which departments should cut
more and which can't afford to cut that deeply.

Many departments will be able to handle their cuts entirely through
early retirements.
Yesterday's meeting spent some time discussing the complex formulas
that determine how much money a department gets to keep from the
salary of a staff member or faculty member who retires. The rest
of the salary goes into the central budget, where it will help to pay for
the lump-sum severance payments those 340 new retirees will get.

And some of the money that's transferred to the central budget will
go back to departments through the reinvestment fund. Rules for the
fund haven't been written yet. Kalbfleisch said that even if all
departments start out even, suffering a 7 per cent cut, the effect
of the new fund will be to produce differential cuts, based on decisions
that are made about UW's priorities. "There needs to be some mechanism
to move budget around, and we haven't had that in a number of years,"
the provost said.

By late next week, departments should get figures on what their
1996-97 budgets look like after the early retirements but before the
cuts start.

Kalbfleisch said the lump-sum payments, plus benefit costs, for 340
early retirees are now expected to total $13.5 million, which he's hoping
can be written off over several years.
(That's in addition to about $35 million coming out of the pension fund.)

"Because of the good uptake," he said, "there is the possibility of some
replacement hiring in critical areas, and some of that will get
started immediately." Recruitment ads for faculty positions in chemical
engineering, for example, are already appearing in print this week.

"Unbiased" pension information

Since the Special Early Retirement Program was announced, the
human resources department has been "inundated" with calls from
financial planners who want to advise the 340 staff and faculty
who will be retiring. "We will not endorse any one company," says
David Dietrich of HR. He's advising each retiree to "compare
apples with apples" in looking at the various forms of pension and
the possibility of cashing out of the UW pension plan altogether.
He said a letter will be going to each of those 340 people shortly,
inviting them to a session at which unbiased information about
retirement financing can be made available.

Mathematics awards banquet

The
faculty of mathematics holds
its annual Awards Banquet tonight in
the Festival Room, South Campus Hall. Guests will eat chicken prosciutto
with spinach in puff pastry, hear remarks from dean Jack Kalbfleisch,
and applaud a large range of scholarship and award winners. A few of
them: